


rust.

by subtlefuse (regionalsky)



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: I promise I'm trying, this will develop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 03:16:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14179338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regionalsky/pseuds/subtlefuse
Summary: “Can you die from caffeine?” Josh asked, looking up at the man for the first time.“Excuse me?”





	rust.

**Author's Note:**

> tell me about your day in the comments.

Josh stumbled in to the 7/11, breathing heavily. Wind whipped his hair in to a frenzy and he cast long shadows into the yellow light of the streetlights. His mind was racing. Would it work? If there was a possibility that this could work, he would do it. He would make it work. He needed to see the boy again, see how he knew. See what else he knew. The boy. His face was fixed in Josh’s mind- short brown hair framing nice, friendly eyes, a slight smile on his bright red lips, licked raw and chapped. He stood with his feet close together, like the slightest wind could blow him over. There was a rubber band around his left wrist, which he fiddled with when he started talking to Josh, and after he embraced him.  
He searched for something in the store- anything- that would help him see the boy again. Angel boy. The cashier looked up, mildly alarmed, when he knocked a bag of gummy worms off the rack.  
“Sorry,” Josh muttered, picking them back up.  
It was fucking stupid what he was doing, but he had to do it, he had to know if it was real. He- the boy- had to have been real, with his soft arms and he smelled like rain, Josh could fucking taste the rain and the campfire smoke, that’s how strong it smelled. The kid- he couldn’t have been older than sixteen- seemed to know something no one else knew. He understood things Josh did not understand.  
He choked, holding back a sob, and slowly stood up. He made his way to the drink isle, trying to reason himself out of it, but at the same time, hoping he would remain desperate enough to try it.  
It couldn’t have been a hallucination. It couldn’t have been. There was no way. His eyes, his eyes were filled with too much sorrow and too much hope and he had said just enough that he had to have been real. He had only come when Josh was hot, too hot. Almost dead. A heat stroke, they told him later. He was lucky to be alive, to be okay. If his teammate didn’t happen to notice how weird he was acting, if his teammate didn’t happen to have read an article on heat stroke forced on him by his mom the day before, the damage could have been a lot worse.  
He knew he hadn’t been imaging the boy stepping out from behind the tree Josh had collapsed under, dry heaving and breathing shallowly. No one else saw him- Josh had asked. The boy talked to him, held him, told him to keep his head up and that things would be okay and that he understood him and one day he would understand himself too. He told him things would get better, and they did.  
And then they didn't, and Josh needed to find him. He looked for him everywhere he could- yearbooks, newspapers, asking friends, but no one had seen the kid in the white t shirt and jeans.

Tyler had no idea what was going on when Josh left the house at three in the morning. He didn't go to Dennis' house, or Will's house- he simply ran down the road. Tyler doubted it meant anything, and almost went back to dreaming but he was curious and followed the boy down the road.  
Josh was off, he was acting weird, and Tyler couldn't quite figure out why. He trotted in white socked feet down the sidewalk behind the older boy, who was running full tilt.  
"Where are you?" He kept muttering. "Where did you go?" Josh knocked over a few bags of candy and sat down in the middle of the floor, looking completely lost.  
He was moving closer to get a better look at the boy's face when he realized that the gasp Josh had let out earlier was actually him holding back a sob, his eyes were red and distraught, his hands shaking.  
Tyler motioned to the cashier. "Maybe talk to him?" He suggested. The cashier blinked, then obeyed.  
“Hey, boy, are you okay?” The old man approached Josh slowly. “Is everything okay?”  
“‘ts fine,” Josh muttered, sniffing and wiping his nose with his forearm. “I’m ‘kay.”  
“What do you need? It’s late to be out, do your parents know where you are?”  
Josh didn’t respond.  
“Is everything okay at home?” The man asked, slowly crouching down next to Josh. He smelled of stale cigarette smoke and his face was twisted in pain as he sank down. Josh didn't move.  
“Well, son,” He said, clapping a hand on his shoulder,” I’m going to have to ask you to go home if you don’t-”  
“Can you die from caffeine?” Josh asked, looking up at the man for the first time.  
“Excuse me?”

 

Tyler thought he had heard Josh wrong. Josh wasn’t suicidal. Not at all. No one thought he was, he didn’t think that way, he didn’t seem like it. It was Tyler’s job to know if he was, and he wasn’t. He was sad, yeah, and frustrated, but not yet driven to that extreme. Tyler had literally just talked to him, in person, weeks before and there was no way he wouldn’t have seen it. Josh would have said something.  
Tyler decided he probably did hear Josh wrong.

 

“As far as I know?” The man said, shaking his head, “No, I don’t think so.”  
“It’s poisonous, though, right?”  
“Look, kid, I don’t know why you’re asking this-”  
“Can I have ten five hour energies?” Josh interrupted, pulling a fifty out of his back pocket.  
“Is everything okay?”  
Josh looked at him.  
“That’s a lot,” The man stood up, wincing at his knees, “you don’t need that many for an all nighter.”  
Josh stood up, straightening his shirt and running a hand through his sweaty hair. “Please?”  
“I mean, if you want to spend that much money on this-”  
“Ten. Please, sir.”  
The man sighed and shook his head, going to the stockroom to get the bottles. 

Tyler almost asked the man not to give them to Josh, but he was curious. What the hell was Josh getting at? You couldn’t die from caffeine, anyways, and Josh wasn’t going to get hurt. It was going to be fine.

Josh took the plastic grocery bag from the man with a small nod of thanks. He waved away the change the man tried to hand back and stepped out the door, shaking his head.  
Was he going to do this? He had to. He had to. There was nothing else to do. He would hate himself if he didn't do it, if he didn't try. If he waited until tomorrow, he would never do it. It was now or never. See the boy now or see the boy never.  
He pressed his back to the rough brick wall behind the store. The lights from the front of the stoor barely reached the back, where Josh slid to the ground amongst flattened beer cans and cigarette filters.  
Now or never. Now or never.


End file.
